Category: Drugs

By looking at drug addiction from an evolutionary perspective, we may understand its underlying significance and evaluate its three-fold nature: biology, psychology, and social influences. By Dr. Tammy Saah / 06.29.2005 Psychiatrist Abstract By looking at drug addiction from an evolutionary perspective, we may understand its underlying significance and evaluate its three-fold nature: biology, psychology,[…]

Many common remedies, as well as the more exotic experimental drugs, were taken throughout the 19th century, with more people than ever using them. What was the social and cultural context of this development? By Louise Crane / 04.28.2011 Picture Researcher Wellcome Collection There is something rich and romantic about the Victorians and their drugs.[…]

Oxycodone-acetaminophen pills. Patrick Sison/AP By Dr. Michael Robinson / 09.29.2017 Assistant Professor of Psychology Wesleyan University Why do they do it? This is a question that friends and families often ask of those who are addicted. It’s difficult to explain how drug addiction develops over time. To many, it looks like the constant search for pleasure.[…]

Looking at the botanical and zoological basis of some of these elixirs to find out whether they’d actually work. Poisons and potions are the weapons of choice for many of Shakespeare’s most iconic characters. Used to seduce lovers, kill enemies and gain power, nothing was too noxious for Shakespeare. Photo by Dan Tentler, Flickr, Creative[…]

A pharmacy. Oil painting by a French painter, ca. 1700. Wellcome Library reference no. 44595i. By Dr. William Schupbach / 09.27.2016 Historian People taking medicines often take more than one medicine simultaneously. Polypharmacy and combination therapy can have many advantages, as well as a number of difficulties, such as non-compliance, unwanted side effects, drug-resistant infections, medical disasters, and[…]

By Michele Rosenthal / 09.11.2017 Addiction as a Coping Mechanism …if you have trauma in your history you woke up with the conscious or unconscious desire for what all trauma survivors want: safety and control. ~ Michele Rosenthal Let’s imagine that you can float up above the timeline of your life, turn and face the past[…]